


Living in a Powderkeg

by Maeve_of_Winter



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Chocolate Box Treat, Episode Tag, Families of Choice, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Secrets, character centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeve_of_Winter/pseuds/Maeve_of_Winter
Summary: During a visit home for the weekend, Brock discovers that Dean knows about the cloning. Set at the end of Season Five.





	Living in a Powderkeg

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jougetsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jougetsu/gifts).



> Note about the timeline: this story takes place after the post-credits scene of the Season Five finale. It assumes that the scene was at least a few days have taken place, during which Brock contacted Rusty and made sure that he was okay. And it seems like Entmann’s second funeral would have needed to be at least a day after the Monarch let Rusty go if Dean and Colonel Gentleman had arrived back from Morocco, so I hope this timeline doesn’t stretch your willing suspension of disbelief that much.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The gate swung shut behind Brock with a clank after HELPeR gave him clearance to drive into the Venture Compound, and just as Brock was turning up the radio and admiring the lawn he’d spent years carefully cultivating, there was a sudden, albeit minor, explosion. Whipping his head up, Brock could see a plume of magenta smoke fanning up from the forested area by the Chimp E-Den.

Honestly, it was more of a reflex than a conscious decision that Brock swung Adrienne off the road and sped over to that area. While faintly annoyed that he couldn’t even get a moment’s peace on his day off, he was more resigned to it than anything else. There had never been a quiet day on the Venture Compound the whole time he’d lived and worked there; why should his vacation time there be any different?

He ditched the car a few yards away from the forest, leaping out and pushing his way through the trees, scanning the area for any sign of a threat, but he found none. And when he located the source of the smoke and explosion, a small clearing with a rudimentary campsite, the only person there wasn’t an enemy, but a familiar teenager in a black speedsuit sprawled across the ground.

“Dean!” Brock exclaimed, his heart going from pounding in anticipation to twisting in worry as he charged over to the prone figure. “Hey, you all right?”

Painstakingly sitting up, Dean rubbed at his forehead, wincing. “Yeah, I think so. I figured out what was gonna happen, so I dove away before the blast hit.”

“Hmm.” Brock gave Dean a quick visual inspection and was satisfied that everything looked intact, but he knew he had to do a physical check before he could rest easy. “Wiggle your fingers and toes,” he commanded him as he reached out to briefly examine Dean’s limbs himself. “Everything working okay?”

It was an old test he’d started for the boys back when they were kids—over a decade ago, he realized vaguely—to make sure they were all right after whatever mishap had befallen them, be it anything from plummeting from a tree they were climbing to being thrown from a rampaging giant mechanical hairy-nosed wombat. They’d always been good at getting into trouble, both on their own and with their father. 

Dean nodded several times in quick succession, a long-time habit of his. “Yeah, it all works and nothing really hurts that much.”

Brock let out a relieved exhale, his pulse slowing down now that he knew Dean was no worse for wear. “Glad to hear it.” He reached out and ruffled Dean’s hair, briefly pausing at the flat black shade that had replaced the natural auburn. 

He didn’t like the new color. Hadn’t since the first moment at OSI HQ when he’d gotten a glimpse of Dean’s new look. (What did the kids these days call it? Scene? Punk? Hell if Brock knew.)

Wasn’t that it looked bad, either. The longer, darker hair and black speedsuit actually suited Dean pretty well. But it just didn’t look like Dean. And after spending almost a solid two decades raising the boys, Brock just hated the idea of one of them looking unfamiliar to him.

Dean noticed his gaze and called him on it. “What’s wrong?” At least his big brown eyes were familiar, as was the slightly worried look within them that he often had.

“Nothing,” Brock lied, unwilling to get caught up in an  argument that he suspected would ensue if he made any comment whatsoever about Dean’s modified appearance. Doc had already argued about it with him several times before Brock had even had the chance to see Dean’s “Skinny Puppy imitation,” as Doc had disparagingly referred to it. Unimpressed by his son’s new style, Doc had put the blame firmly on Brock for introducing Dean to “heathen rock music” and Hatred for listening to Johnny Cash, insisting that Dean’s change in fashion and, evidently, attitude, was all their fault and definitely not just a teenage phase.

And if Doc was regularly pestering Dean about how he dressed, chances were Dean was already defensive and didn’t want to talk about. Brock would open that can of worms when it wasn’t his day off.

He opted for a safer subject instead. “Where’s Hank?” Usually if one of the boys was nearby an explosion, the other wasn’t far away.

“Uncle Vatred took him to the hospital,” Dean informed him. “He got hurt when Colonel Gentleman and Action Man were reenacting one of their old battles. Hank was playing Brainulo.”

Brock groaned. “Those two lunatics are here?  _ Why? _ ” So much for a chance to relax.

Dean hesitated, a sure sign that Brock would need to get the full details from someone else. “It’s a long story,” he hedged. “But they both decided to move back to the East Coast, and after Hank got hurt, Pop decided to go with them and Dr. Quizboy and Mr. White to New York City to check out their brownstone in New York City.”

“He went with them?” Brock let out an exasperated huff. “Oh, come on—I called ahead of time to let him know I’d be coming today!”  

“I guess he must have forgotten in all of the excitement,” Dean replied, seemingly still an optimist despite what his father had reported to Brock about his bad attitude. “Colonel Gentleman, Action Man, and Dr. Quizboy’s mom are all going to be roommates,” he added brightly. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Uh-huh,” Brock said skeptically. He glanced around at the scattered supplies around them. “What’s all this, then?”

“It was was Gary’s campsite,” Dean explained. “He was living on the Compound’s lawn for a while after SPHINX headquarters was destroyed. Uncle Vatred was going to kick him out, but Hank asked if he could stay, so then Uncle Vatred let Gary stay. Except now he says that Gary betrayed him to the Monarch, so then he went and firebombed the house where the Monarch was living, and now Gary’s moved out. I was just trying to clean up his old campsite.”

“Looks like he was trying to make his own explosives,” Brock observed, now noticing the other shallow craters nearby and the scattered piles of what looked like gunpowder—magenta gunpowder. “Leave it here. Hatred and I will do a sweep of the place tomorrow.” He stood, offering Dean a hand up as well. “C’mon, let’s go inside. I’ve been driving for hours and could use a drink.”

Dean accepted his hand and Brock effortlessly pulled him to his feet, but the moment Dean tried to take a step forward, he immediately stumbled. He would have fallen if Brock hadn’t been there to wrap a strong arm around his narrow shoulders.

“You all right?” Brock asked, frowning in concern as he scanned Dean up and down, wondering what injury he’d missed.

Dean grimaced. “It’s my ankle. I didn’t notice how badly it hurt until I tried to walk.”

“You must have twisted it when you were trying to get away from the grenade,” Brock realized. He tightened his grip around Dean’s shoulders, making he would be able to help him walk. “Well, come on then. Adrienne is only parked a little ways away, and then I can drive you right to the front steps.”

Nodding his agreement, Dean didn’t speak as they began to move forward. While Brock was mostly concentrating on making sure Dean had enough support to move comfortably and that there were no protruding roots or loose stones in their path, he noticed Dean sneaking glances at him every so often, turning his face away whenever Brock tried to look back at him.

“What is it?” Brock asked without preamble as they emerged from the forest and Adrienne came into view.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Dean said hastily, but he had that guilty expression on his face that he got whenever he had to tell Brock something he really didn’t want to hear.  _ Brock, we were playing with your spare lighter and we accidentally burned up your herb garden. Brock, the Monarch unleashed a bunch of killer moths in the hangar bay, and we smushed them all with a baseball bat, but we smashed Adrienne’s windshield when we did.  _

Brock sighed. “Look, just tell me. I promise I won’t get mad, and if I do, I mean, I’m only staying the weekend.” He paused, a suspicion forming in his mind about what Dean might have done, and if he was right, it was one that would have Doc calling him all day and night to blame him for if it proved true. “You didn’t, uh, get . . .  _ something  _ pierced to go along with your Marilyn Manson makeover, did you?”

Disgust swept over Dean’s face. “Ew! No! Why would you even—”

“I was just asking!” Brock protested. “Who knows what kids your age are into?”

“I’m not into  _ that! _ ” Dean insisted.

“Well, if you are thinking about doing it, just know that there are, like, health issues—infections—that could complicate things—” Brock began, but Dean cut him off.

“I’m not putting a barbell through my dick, Brock,” he told him flatly. “At most, I’ve considered an eyebrow piercing. But don’t tell Pop that,” he hurried to add.

“Well, I’m really glad we established what you are and and aren’t currently doing with your dick. And I won’t tell  _ him _ as long as  _ you _ tell me what’s going on,” Brock offered. 

Whenever other methods with the boys failed, bargaining was one of his go-to options. It usually proved effective, and this time was no exception.

“Okay,” Dean said resignedly.

Brock stopped so he could look at him directly, still keeping an arm around his shoulders. “Well?”

Dean’s gaze dropped briefly, and when he met Brock’s eyes again, the look on his face was almost . . . shy. It caught Brock off-guard, but then it suddenly made sense when he registered Dean’s next words.

“I just wanted to let you know that I know that I’m a clone,” he said, looking at Brock’s face nervously as he spoke, clearly waiting to see his reaction.

Not much threw Brock these days, especially not after all of his time with the Ventures, but this sentence hit him with the force of a bullet train. He could only stand there and gape at Dean, wondering if he’d heard him correctly. His grip on Dean’s shoulder slacked, his hand almost sliding off, before he forcefully set it back, squeezing harder than he had before.

“Did . . . did Doc tell you?” he finally choked out, barely managing to muddle through his shock to form the words.

“Er.” Dean grimaced, shooting a glance at the hand Brock had clamped onto his shoulder. “Brock, you’re really hurting me.”

“What? Oh.” Instantly, Brock loosened his grip again but kept his hand there. “Sorry about that,” he told Dean with a twinge of guilt. “I just need to know how you found out.”

There had been an agreement between himself and Doc. Doc’s creepy cloning lab, Doc’s kids, Doc’s responsibility to tell them the truth should he ever need to. Brock hadn’t ever thought Doc _ would  _ tell them, though.

Dean shook his head, his forehead creasing as he looked at Brock. “Nah. Last Halloween I went into that old Potter house on a dare and I met Ben. He told me the truth. Dad doesn’t know that we know.”

“ ‘We’?” Brock repeated weakly, his heart pounding again. “Hank knows, too?”

Really, he should have suspected as much; even as they’d grown up, the boys had been virtually inseparable. It made sense that if one of the boys knew they were clones, the other would know, too.

But with just how hot-headed Hank could be, Brock was dreading what type of reception he’d get from him now that he knew that Brock, someone he’d idolized for years, had been lying to him throughout his entire life.

To say nothing of if the boys had found out what Brock’s duties had been when only one boy died and the other witnessed it.

“I just told him today. And he’s fine with it. He thinks it’s cool,” Dean, ever the peacemaker,  rushed to assure him. 

“Jesus,” Brock muttered, scrubbing at his face with his spare hand as his pulse slowed once more. He’d forgotten how stressful life with the Ventures could be. He looked directly at Dean, noting the black clothing and dyed hair once more. “And what about you? Are you okay with it? Is that what all of this,” he waved his hand to indicate Dean’s clothes, “is all about?”

For a moment, Dean hesitated, and then he gave a self-conscious shrug.

“It’s about a lot of things,” he admitted. “I’m tired. Of being different. Of being stuck on a compound in the middle of nowhere. Of being dragged along on Pop’s crazy schemes. I always thought I wanted to be an adventurer, but now that I know I’ve died from it in the past—I don’t think I do. I’d really just like a shot at doing what everyone else does. To have what other people have. Even if that’s just a mom and a dad. I even tracked down Myra again to see if she was really our mom.”    

“You went looking for Myra? Goddammit, Dean!” Brock scowled at him, both from anger that Dean had put himself in unnecessary danger from someone he knew was unstable and worry for what could have been. “You know she’s a risk to you  _ and _ your brother! She kidnapped you!”

Dean looked abashed, but he offered no apology as he tilted his chin up, a hint of that teenage defiance Doc had ranted to him about showing through. “I wanted answers, and I got them. She’s not our mom. But I still don’t know who our mom actually is.”

Brock sighed. “Yeah. There’s that.”

Truthfully, Brock had never known, either. Doc had never told him, and the OSI had never considered Doc important enough to get Brock to pester him about it. Brock had always had his suspicions about Myra, about why Doc had been so adamant about erasing the boys’ memories each time she’d kidnapped them even as Brock himself had argued it was better to make sure the boys remained aware of her as a potential threat. To Brock, it hadn’t mattered if she was or wasn’t their mother—what had mattered was that she was a danger to them. And of course, Myra had definitely been convinced she was the boys’ mother, and while she was a complete nutjob, Doc had been more than willing to brag about all the sex he’d had with her, so it wasn’t exactly an unfounded theory.

So it was a relief to confirm that Myra didn’t have any kind of claim to Dean and Hank. Truth be told, Brock found himself both hoping and dreading that the boys did have a normal mom somewhere out there—hope that they could one day find her and meet her, since it seemed to mean a lot to at least Dean, and dread of what it meant that it had been almost twenty years without her trying to contact them.

“I . . . I guess it can be one of your mysteries,” Brock told him, unsure of what else to say and not knowing how how to comfort him about a situation that he’d tried his best not to be involved in. “You’ve always been good at solving those. And I’ll help you with it,” he hurried to tack on. “So you should take me with you next time to go to confront whatever other woman you think might be your mom.” He didn’t _ think  _ Doc had more than one ex-girlfriend he’d driven into lunacy, but one could never be too sure where Doc was concerned. 

Dean gave him a smile, the warm expression making it clear that while the hair and clothing might have been different, the kid in front of him was still  _ Dean.  _ “Thanks, Brock.”

“Welcome.” Brock backtracked to the cloning; a part of him was still reeling that both of the boys knew. “This whole clone business. You’re really cool with that?” 

Dean considered it, looking away momentarily as he thought about it, then he looked back at Brock, meeting his eyes directly. “I wasn’t for a long time,” he confessed. “I’ve known for almost a year, and I felt awful about it most of the time. But now that I’ve told Hank, now that I know he’s okay with it . . . I feel a lot better. I used to think telling him that secret would make him hate you and Pop and break our family apart, and because of that, I didn’t like Pop very much. But if Hank can be okay with it . . . I guess I can be, too. I mean, I’ll never be completely fine with it, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to,” Dean concluded, offering him a half-smile.

A strange emotion swelled within Brock, one he had difficulty placing, and he found himself again at a loss for words, though this time not because of shock.

So instead of speaking, he pulled Dean into a firm hug, mindful of his twisted ankle even as he wrapped his arms around him tightly. Relief swept over him again, and he had to admit that he thought Dean was right, that it did feel better to have this secret out in the open and know that neither of the boys held his involvement against him. 

“You were always Dean to me,” he told him roughly, finding it hard to speak as he held tightly onto the kid he’d raised from infancy, the kid he’d seen dead more than a dozen times before. “And Hank was always Hank. You were never replacements to me—you were always the boys.”  _ My boys, _ he added silently.

He could feel Dean nod against his shoulder. “And I never hated you for lying to us. I know it was a part of your job. I know it was Pop’s fault and not yours.”

“Heh.” Brock couldn’t hold back a chuckle at Dean’s unremitting, if not necessarily reassuring, honesty. 

Truthfully, he couldn’t entirely ignore a nagging feeling that maybe this moment wasn’t his to have with Dean, that it should have been taking place between Doc and Dean instead. Doc had created the clones, after all. All this fuzzy heart-to-heart stuff about getting Dean’s forgiveness probably should have been happening to Doc. Dean  _ was _ his kid.

But somewhere along the line, Dean and Hank had stopped just being Doc’s kids and become Brock’s kids. And even though Brock had never asked for or wanted Dean’s forgiveness before now, he found himself grateful to have it, just as grateful as he was to know Hank’s hero-worship of him remained unchanged now that Dean had told him the truth after spending months of keeping it a secret.

With a growing sense of realization, Brock recognized the emotion swelling within him: pride. He was proud of the kid he’d raised, proud that he was willing to stay miserable for almost a year just to protect his brother.

Yeah, Brock thought he’d done a good job of raising the boys, no matter what Doc had to say about it. 

“Let’s go back to the house,” he said, arranging himself so that he could help Dean walk again. “We can catch up some more once we’re there, okay? I’ll make us some grilled cheese.”

“I’d like that,” Dean replied, a grin spreading over his features.

They resumed the trek back to Adrienne, Brock slowly guiding Dean along. Wanting to make sure Dean kept the weight off his injured leg, Brock put one arm around his middle for support.

And he couldn’t help but find it reassuring that Dean didn’t hesitate to lean against him once he did.


End file.
